An artists' representation of a hypothetical, 15-year old, comic-book loving Miss Stacia
Around page 9 of “Brief Lives,” otherwise known as Volume 7 of Neil Gaiman’s epic Sandman series, I came upon a panel that first haunted me, and then changed my perception of my adolescence, forever.
In the panel, the character know as Delirium, one of the seven anthropomorphized, intangible forces known as the Endless, enters a nightclub on her search for her departed older brother Destruction. The nightclub is raunchy and replete with fishnet and leather clad club kids; a song pervading the background in wisps overhead with the words:
“All the word just stopped now. So you say you don’t wanna stay together anymore. Let me take a deep breath babe.”
I am waiting for my dinner date in a Japanese restaurant when I read this, and a soft rock soundtrack stunts my ability to place the familiar lyrics.
“Shit. I know this.”
…
“Oh my god, it’s Tori!”
The existence of a friendship/working relationship between Tori Amos and Neil Gaiman had been brought to my attention a few weeks earlier, when, in my desperation at not being able to find Sandman Volumes 3 and 4 in any Manhattan book or comic store (disaster!), I started reading Gaiman short stories to keep myself in the dream zone. In Fragile Things, Gaiman’s most recent story collection, I came upon reprinted program notes for Tori’s Strange Little Girls tour, written by the fantasy master at the request of the fiery songstress.
I happened to attend a show on the Strange Little Girls tour when I lived in Boston and I remember those glossy programs vividly. The concept of the album, which marked the point where my Tori fandom actually began to wither, involved Tori embodying a different female personality on each track, dressing in costumey garb for a series of comic (as in laughable) portraits and repurposing songs like Eminem’s "Bonnie and Clyde" to disastrous effect. Gaiman’s job was to craft short poems to complement each song/lady package, and the results were disjointed, strangely voiced, and lacking resonance, especially compared to his portrayal of females in his comic (as in book) work.
But discovering my latest dark obsession and my teen angst obsession had at one point converged, was at once electric and satisfying.
So I’m still sitting in the Japanese restaurant, eyes glued to the corner of a page in Volume 7, written eleven years before Fragile Things and six before the release of Strange Little Girls, and I'm still processing that by the time Gaiman had come to the tail end of his epic about Morpheus, Lord of Dreams, Tori had already crawled her way into his creative headspace. But I haven't yet answered the question of where the hell those lyrics are from, exactly.
I plug my ears with my fingers and the humming commences, while in my head I access:
All the world just stopped now
So you say you don’t wanna stay to-
gether anymore
Let me take a deep breath babe
...
If you need me and NEIL’LL BE…
(inner “HOLY SHIT!”)
HANGING OUT WITH THE DREAM KING
Now, I am not a lyrics person, generally speaking. I have gone many years only half-knowing the lyrics to my very favorite songs, and occasionally something will come out and clarify a particularly nonsensical Stacia translation and my world of references will be forced to adjust for accuracy. In the case of these particular Tori lines, for example, I have always ignored the fact that I had no idea who Neil was, and had translated the remainder of the lyrics as follows:
If you need me
Me and Neil’ll be
Hanging out with the Dream Team
For over a decade, as far as I knew, Tori could have been singing about the 1986 New York Mets.
Needless to say, when I discovered this Sandman reference, embedded in track 10 of my beloved Little Earthquakes, it triggered a moment of elation. It was like recognizing you and your boyfriend were at the same concert, sitting three seats away from each other, ten years before you ever met. My mouth hung open for the first minute and a half after I made the connection, and then I sat squealing, wanting to scream out to the heavens like a love crazed fool. I felt a desperate need to call someone and explain how I just discovered this beautiful overlap of two cultural loves of my life, but when I tried to think of someone who would appreciate the intersection, I came up blank. Finding people who simultaneously appreciate sci-fi and fantasy graphic novels and feministic piano-driven singer songwriters is a tough assignment, unless you’re smoking cigarettes on the middle school handball courts in 1995.
Suddenly, I thought of a girl named Jane, with whom I shared a relationship slightly above the acquaintance level in middle and high school. Jackie had a propensity for wearing black, brandishing smudgy eyeliner and spitting dark, sarcastic comebacks. She also had a sister who introduced her to The Cure and whose overall grumpiness found solace in the lyrically potent females acts of the early nineties. I was still inhabiting the land of bubblegum pop radio when Jane and I knew each other, but had picked up a Tori cassette tape on a cross country trip one summer, so the two of us occasionally talked about Tori or PJ Harvey or Fiona Apple, who may have been even a little too sensitive for Jane’s sensibilities.
Ten years later, it occurs to me Jane probably would have loved Sandman and may have even experienced it in its comic form. Did Jane experience the concurrent growth of Tori and Gaiman’s careers? Did she read the line from “Tear In Your Hand,” on page 9 in 1995 and let off a sarcastic smirk of knowing? And if Jane and my relationship had blossomed beyond Mrs. Chang’s history class, would I be long past (or deeper into?) the world of Gaiman right now?
When I first started reading Sandman, my awesome friend Comic Guy Mike informed me it was a book that, when released, was particularly embraced by goth kids. As someone with a pretty morbid sense of humor, a realistic-bordering-on-pessimistic view of the world, and hair that, if any darker, would take on a Betty and Veronica blue-black sheen, it's apparent I was probably an influential friend and a black dress away from life as a teenage goth girl. Which perhaps explains my newfound inclination to wear tons of deep blue eyeliner, the color of which can be found otherwise only on salesgirls at Hot Topic, and in the Dreamworld.
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